I’ve always been wired to feel life more deeply — mentally, emotionally, and physically. But for years, I didn’t have the language to explain it.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my early twenties by a doctor who checked off the boxes: restless, distracted, emotionally intense, trouble sitting still, easily bored, disorganized, always leaving a trail wherever I went. I was animated, talkative, drawn to new ideas and experiences. As a child, I gravitated toward singing, dancing, drawing, and writing — anything creative. I could hyperfocus for hours, but only on what truly lit me up. I always remembered birthdays, and if anything, I was chronically early — driven by the anxiety of being late.
Ritalin was prescribed. It never felt like the full answer.
Throughout my life, pills were offered for everything — anxiety, focus, sleep, low mood. I was even prescribed birth control solely to regulate my mood. But none of them addressed what I was really struggling with: an overstimulated nervous system, a body constantly on high alert, and a deep feeling of being too much — and not enough.
It’s only now, looking back, that I wonder how often we diagnose sensitivity as something to fix — rather than something to understand.
Years before ADHD became a buzzword for adults, I attended a small lecture in San Francisco by psychologist Dr. Elaine Aron. It was around 1997 — part of The Learning Annex, a kind of nineties self-growth hub where you could learn about anything from real estate to reincarnation.
The talk was on The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You. It was her first time presenting this material publicly, and she admitted to being nervous. For me, it was a lightbulb moment.
I had browsed the workshop listings many times, hoping to find something that could explain why the world felt louder, brighter, and heavier. This one did. As Dr. Aron described the traits — deep processing, emotional responsiveness, sensitivity to noise, light, crowds, and moods — it felt like she was describing me. She gave me language for the inner world I had never been able to explain.
I wasn’t defective. I was sensitive. Wired differently.
If I dropped into a loud environment too quickly, I’d buffer — like my brain was still processing and calibrating, caught in a foggy haze before I could come back to the room and speak. I’m sure I appeared distant, aloof, checked out. I craved connection, but lived in a body that couldn’t tolerate stimulation overload.
I wasn’t introverted either. My energy was a bit much for the quiet crowd. I consider myself more of an otrovert: an observer, friendly but not absorbed. Present, but never quite inside the frame. Social enough to be mistaken for an extrovert. Porous enough to need an exit.
From that point on, I identified more with being highly sensitive than with having ADHD — though it’s possible I carry traits of both. Those labels helped for a while, but they were never the whole story — just the language I had before I understood my nervous system.
Yes, I was distractible, impulsive, and scattered at times — but not in the ways ADHD is typically described. I was never late. I followed through when something mattered. What I couldn’t tolerate was chaos, boredom, or emotionally disconnected environments.
And if you grow up in a family that doesn’t understand sensitivity — especially in a Brooklyn neighborhood like mine, where it felt like most didn’t — you often end up looking like a problem child.
My mother was practical, reserved, and emotionally distant. She didn’t know how to meet my needs, and I didn’t know how to manage the bigness of my emotions. She often criticized my restlessness, my talkativeness. At dinner parties, if I squirmed or spoke out of turn, she’d twist my ear or pinch me under the table — a quiet correction with a lasting echo. I got the message early: sit still. Quiet down. Don’t be so much. Don’t take up too much space.
Looking back, many of my symptoms may have been less about ADHD — and more about an overwhelmed, unsupported nervous system. A body without emotional safety will always find a way to cope.
At seventeen, I had what now feels like an inevitable, full-blown panic attack.
I was working in midtown Manhattan, commuting from Brooklyn. It was a hot summer day. I was late for work, racing toward the subway when I heard the train rumbling through the grate. I quickened my pace to catch it.
The train was packed — standing room only. I was hanging onto the overhead hand strap, pressed between bodies. The AC wasn’t working. The lights were flickering. Then we got stuck between stations.
I couldn’t breathe. My heart pounded so loudly it felt like everyone could hear it. I thought I was having a heart attack.
It felt like we were stopped for an eternity. I prayed for the train to start moving so I could get off what felt like a death trap. That ride changed everything.
After that, I started associating the subway with panic. The attacks kept happening. And no one around me — at home or in the medical system — knew how to help.
I was hospitalized for a week at Methodist Hospital in Park Slope — the same hospital where I was born, just blocks from where we lived. Doctors ran every test: heart monitor, lung scans, labs. All came back normal. There was no diagnosis, no explanation. Just “You’re fine” — and a prescription.
I suddenly didn’t do well in crowded spaces — and in New York, that was most spaces. The noise, the crush of people, the sensory overload pushed my system past its limit. I was grateful for Prospect Park, just across the street from where I grew up. A place to exhale and just be.
The subway is the artery and pulse of New York City — its rhythm, its lifeline. When I began to fear it, I felt cut off from the city’s lifeblood — disconnected from everything that once made me feel alive.
A year later, I left New York for California and never moved back.
Brooklyn had been the most stable part of my life. Letting it go felt like losing a part of myself.
What I needed growing up was self-understanding, emotional safety, and nervous system regulation. What I got were prescriptions and praise for being high-functioning.
High-functioning isn’t the same as healthy. And being fine on the outside doesn’t mean you’re okay inside.
This was the eighties. No one talked about emotional regulation, sensitivity, or nervous system support. The medical system did what it always did — rule out the physical, then send you home with a prescription.
I spent years trying to understand why my body seemed to defy me. I read every book I could find, wandered libraries like they held the missing pieces, signed up for workshops, attended lectures — and became a research participant in a UCSD study on panic disorder. It helped. The anxiety didn’t vanish, but the out-of-the-blue panic attacks stopped. I had tools.
For decades, I followed thinkers and writers who put words to things I had always felt but never learned how to articulate. I was trying to understand my body, my wiring, my reactions to a world that often felt too loud, too fast, too uncertain.
And through it all, I worked. I overachieved. I burned out. I took pride in being the one who could handle the pressure — tight deadlines, high demands, constant chaos — until I couldn’t. I built a life, had a career, even stability for a while. But I also started over more times than I can count.
Looking back, I was addicted to reinvention — moving, starting over, leaving cities, leaving relationships. For a long time, it felt like freedom. Until it didn’t.
Was it ADHD? HSP? Trauma? Anxiety? In many ways, I’m an otrovert — an observer, friendly but not absorbed. Connected, but never quite inside the frame.
The labels eventually blurred. They stopped explaining me and started limiting me. What mattered more was understanding how I’m wired — and learning to work with it rather than against it.
Today, I know what I need to stay regulated: gentle structure, nourishing food, movement, creative outlets, and time to reset. I’ve learned to work with my sensitivity — not override it.
A label can be helpful. But it isn’t everything. What matters more is what you do with what you learn.
Being highly sensitive in a world that moves fast is one thing. But being highly sensitive and wired to connect — that’s the contradiction I continue to navigate.
The hunger for external energy shifted when writing found me again. The buzz I once needed from rooms full of people, I now find at a desk. The stimulation is internal. The connection is still real. It’s just sourced differently.
That, too, is part of the wiring.
“I wasn’t defective. I was wired differently.”
Read:
→ The Highly Sensitive Extrovert: The Paradox
→ How Unresolved Trauma Lives in the Body
→ Breaking the Cycle
→ Life Outside the Frame
→ Feel to Heal
